All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.
Pink Fairy Lanterns and Common Madia
(May 9, 2023)
ROOMS THAT DREAM:
APT. 33
In Apt. 33, you venture far beyond your society and there you meet your daimon, your higher self, an aspect of your psyche that transcends space and time. Sometimes, for instance, you experience nonlocal consciousness, and you know what is happening in places far from your limited physical perceptions. Your higher self communicates with your conscious mind through voices and visions and intuitions and is your link to Universal Consciousness: sometimes you even become the eyes of God, the Universal Consciousness perceiving Itself through your senses. Sometimes you even perceive the cosmos, a tiny speck of light surrounded by the blackness of space, from the perspective of the Infinite Mind. You know that there is really no distance between your consciousness and the consciousness of other people and the flora and fauna of the natural world. You don't take drugs in Apt. 33. You don't need to take drugs. You know that consciousness is not finite. You know that essence precedes existence. You know that life is not meaningless and absurd. Even though other people might view you as an object to be exploited or oppressed or abused, you can usually avoid or transcend that annoyance. You are in touch with your soul, and you know that the self contains a wide spectrum of energies that connect with a vast tapestry of energies in the world and the cosmos.
(You realize that you are still on the right path because you find a story by Justin C. in your spiritual room....)
(May 9, 2023)
PENDULUM DREAMS:
The Altar
Throughout my life, I have experienced numerous paranormal events. I knew I could not tell my family and friends about them, so I tried to dismiss them and forget about them as quickly as possible. In my early forties when I started meditating, the paranormal experiences increased, a few terrifying, but most leading to greater spiritual awareness. One day, I wondered out loud why these paranormal experiences kept happening to me, why I hear voices accurately predicting the future and clarifying my experiences, why I have visions of spiritual symbols, why I have powerful intuitions about people and events. I soon discovered that many people, including Socrates and Gandhi, have experienced an aspect of the psyche known the "daimon" (pronounced "di-mown"). The Romans referred to the daimon as the genius, or guiding spirit, of each individual person and of each organized unit within nature. Qabalists symbolize the daimon as the Holy Guardian Angel to represent a higher aspect of the psyche that transcends space and time (in other words, the soul). I eventually discovered that the daimon and genius and Holy Guardian Angel resemble what scientists nowadays call "nonlocal consciousness."
The term "local realism" or "local consciousness" refers to the the experience of specific circumstances within the limited space and time experienced by each individual. The concept of nonlocal consciousness, on the other hand, is at the heart of mystical and paranormal experiences: nonlocal consciousness links our personal energy field with Universal Consciousness. The cosmos, which as the Qabalists reveal in the glyph of the Tree of Life and even as some scientists claim, contains at least eleven dimensions. In addition to innumerable types of beings and energies, Universal Consciousness contains holographic "memories" of the past as well as knowledge of the future. In an article published in the National Library of Medicine, an official United States government website, Andrew Lohreya and Bruce Borehamb state, "The interconnected universal consciousness implied by the concept of one mind constitutes the nonlocal, singular implicit reality of a universal consciousness that has embedded within itself the local and explicit conscious mind of each individual (1)." The individual psyche can transcend local consciousness and access other dimensions as well as other times and places by experiencing the "One Mind" (known as God by most people) through nonlocal consciousness--which to me is a perfect explanation for most of my paranormal experiences.
Over the course of my lifetime, I have employed several techniques to maintain peace of mind, mainly because I was fortunate as a kid. My family would sometimes go camping, and when my parents were busy fishing, my brother would often dash into the woods, and I would do my best to keep up with him until he ditched me in the wilderness. I would cuss him out for a few minutes, but then I would begin to enjoy hanging out with the trees and rocks and water until the deep tranquility of the Earth Soul drenched me with a peace that I have rarely experienced in human society. Alone in the woods, as a boy I experienced powerful intuitions and voices that accurately predicted the future, and I strive now as often as I can to find a path through the woods back to that peace beyond understanding. Everyday I also find my way into a forest of symbols to experience nonlocal consciousness.
When I was a child, this peace and harmony prepared me for the understanding, much later on in life, that the cosmos, including human thoughts and feelings, is comprised of fields upon fields of energy, all interconnected within Universal Consciousness. And as the core of my being continued to resonate with the Earth, I eventually understood that we experience many vibrations of energy, not just with our physical senses, but with the soul.
Many obstacles can interfere with our ability to experience nonlocal consciousness. As I grew up, I lived with the fear of failure: the failure to fit in as well as the failure to be myself. I knew that I would never succeed and gain financial independence unless I made the right grades, impressed the right people and always performed well in the right circumstances. I eventually realized that I could not fit into this society and remain who I really am, my quirky, creative self, and I grew sick of the fear of failure, especially since I already had an illness that the people closest to me did not wish to acknowledge. Due to chronic illness, no matter how hard I worked, succeeding in living up to the expectations of others required a Herculean effort that resulted in little or no emotional or spiritual satisfaction. The less I was able to feel satisfaction, the more tired I became of a fear-based life until finally I reached a point where I desired to live, to the greatest extent possible, a creative life free of negativity.
In my early forties, paranormal events began occurring on a regular basis. I began having visions of spiritual symbols during meditation and hearing a voice that clarified the visions. At the same time, I lost jobs due to my political activism and ill health. I realized as I was envisioning symbols of harmony that my psyche was out of balance and brimming with negativity. Fortunately, I was able to reestablish harmony is several ways: I found paths back to the peace of the Earth Soul, and my visions of symbols led me to the Tree of Life and a method of spiritual development known as the Qabalah (or Kabbalah).
I burn myself up in my own mind every night, which I think is one of the main reasons that I have survived the past two decades. At one stage of the banishing ritual, which I perform just before going to bed, I invoke Michael, the Archangel of the element of Fire, and in my mind a golden caduceus wand leaps into me, the central staff extending below my feet and up to the crown chakra above my head. Then in my mind spiritual fire consumes me, and negativity burns away.
The caduceus wand is not the conventional wand associated with the element of Fire. A symbol used by the medical profession to symbolize health, the caduceus wand on the spiritual level represents the pure life-force moving through the channels of the aura, the balanced Ida and Pingala energies entwined and flowing along the central Sushumna channel without obstruction. When I first performed the banishing ritual, I imagined the wooden staff that represents the element of Fire in the Tarot, but by the twentieth time I performed the ritual, the caduceus wand appeared in my mind’s eye, and that wand has “leaped” into my aura during the ritual ever since.
Four symbols in the banishing ritual represent the cosmic force of harmony, known in Western civilization as the Christ force, on different levels: the sword, the cup, the wand, the pentagram, each standing for an Element of the Wise known as Air, Water, Fire, Earth, respectively, each element symbolically representing a type of subtle energy “behind” the material plane. An Archangel is associated with each element, Raphael with the element of Air in the eastern quadrant, Michael (Mee-kai-el) with the element of Fire in the southern quadrant, Gabriel with the element of Water in the western quadrant, and Auriel in the northern quadrant. During the ritual, as I invoke the Archangels, the symbols of the sword, wand, cup, pentagram in turn become centered within my psyche. The effect of the sword, caduceus wand, chalice, and pentagram on the heart and mind is hauntingly powerful, like the influence of a dream that only wears off gradually, because the symbols of the elements are links to spiritual realities. Each symbol, in other words, is a channel for the cosmic force of harmony into a different level of the psyche. Each symbol represents a different dimension and moves the practitioner from local consciousness to nonlocal consciousness.
The Christ is the dominant archetype of harmonizing love and spiritual exultation in Western religion, but the cosmic force of balance and harmony goes by many names and has many faces. Besides Jesus, different Gods and Archangels, from Ra, Ma’at, Thoth, Osiris, Isis, Horus in Egypt, to Apollo and Dionysus and Athena in Greece, to Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel in the Middle East, to name a few, have represented aspects of this force.
What could be a more powerful symbol of the conscious mind establishing and maintaining harmony than the shining, double-edged sword, oriented straight up and down? What could be a more powerful symbol of health and balance within the psyche than the caduceus wand? The cup as an archetype, which in the esoteric tradition of the Qabalah is a deep bowl on top of a truncated pyramid, symbolizes spirit manifesting harmoniously in matter. And the pentagram, so often mistakenly interpreted as a symbol of the devil, represents the secret name of Christ, representing the higher self manifesting in the incarnated personality and spirit manifesting harmoniously within matter. Used repeatedly for at least forty days, the length of time it takes to make or break a habit, and then continuously afterward to clear away negative energies and protect against malicious spirits, the banishing ritual channels the cosmic force of harmony and balance, what in Western society we call the Christ force, into the psyche.
The figure of Jesus emphasizes love as the way to manifest the Christ force, the new commandment being, “Love one another.” I’ve discovered that it is difficult to love others if the soul is plagued by negativity and disrupted by chaotic thinking. The banishing ritual is one simple method that aids in the process of mental and physical purification, using symbols that channel the cosmic force of harmony into the soul. This is “practical” spirituality that resolves internal conflicts before they erupt into external conflicts, which within this volatile society can quickly escalate into violence and even war. At this time of planetary crisis, for me the ritual is a simple but powerful way of establishing harmony within my sphere of influence to the greatest extent possible.
Due to my compulsions, spiritual, artistic, and otherwise, and my chronic illness, I have lived mainly outside the pale, and I am well aware that in this society, by speaking my truth, I lose credibility as a “serious” artist. My work is either an alternative view of sanity or it is insanity--but so, I’ve discovered, is most religion that stems from authentic spiritual experience.
In retrospect, one experience a few years ago at Tamarack Creek reflects how my work stands in relationship to an audience. Claiming that this actually happened calls into question my sanity and everything I have said, but I will go to my grave insisting that this occurred even if it makes the rest of my work for the average reader collapse in a clatter of postmodern nihilism and obfuscation.
One day a few years ago, my wife and I hiked along a creek past blue gentian, tiger lilies, lupine, columbine, paint brush and sneezeweed until we reached a beach within a small canyon, where we lounged against rocks near the tranquil creek. My wife began reading a passage out loud from a book in which the writer claims that all time exists at once within the mind of God. A person in physical incarnation, however, must travel through linear time as though through a tunnel and can focus only on a particular part of the tunnel wall. If a person were to go through the same tunnel twice while focusing on a different part of the wall, life could end up being very different. Any two people who go through the same tunnel have a different experience, depending on their perspective. (That is at least what I remember hearing.)
While my wife was reading out loud, I suddenly heard a male tenor belting out a song a capella on the other side of the creek. The singer was so loud that I sometimes had difficulty understanding what my wife was reading, so I was surprised when I could not see the singer nearby. I thought at first that he was an aspiring opera singer who had chosen a secluded natural area to practice his art, but he sang with a smooth delivery in some other language, without pausing or making any mistakes, each song with a different tempo and tone, each song a masterpiece. After eight or nine of these songs, I realized that I was hearing the work of a consummate artist who was sharing his astonishing voice with the natural world, the way a bird might sing for the sheer joy of it. I shared my amazement with my wife and told her that I wanted to search the area. She stopped reading and smiled. As I hiked down the creek, I looked everywhere but could not find any sign of the singer.
As I was hiking, I suddenly envisioned a logger from Europe practicing his art by the creek during his time off, but I had the uneasy feeling that such a situation could only have occurred many years ago, possibly even a century before. By the time I returned to the little beach by the creek, the performance was over. I was disappointed because I thought the singer had disappeared into the woods and I had lost my opportunity to meet the artist and share my admiration for his work. My wife and I packed up our belongings, climbed out of the canyon and trekked back to the car.
My wife and I returned to the beach by the creek several months later, and I mentioned the amazing performance that we had experienced the previous time. My wife looked at me, perplexed. I reminded her that we had heard a song cycle in some other language while she was reading out loud to me. My wife claimed that she had never heard anyone singing by the creek. I couldn’t believe that she had forgotten, especially since the vocalist had belted out each song so ebulliently that I could hardly hear what she was reading. She became nonplussed and insisted that she had never heard anyone singing by this creek or any other creek, ever. She began looking at me like I was a lunatic, both of us becoming more and more frustrated at the other’s insistence on a totally different reality.
I returned a few months later by myself and explored the other side of the creek. About a quarter of a mile down from the beach I found a heavy iron stove in an area that loggers had clear cut. A logging road led from that area up toward the main highway. I deduced, based on the design of the stove, that the camp had been abandoned many years before and that the loggers had decided to leave the stove behind because it was too heavy to transport.
I cannot explain in any scientific way why I heard the incredible singer and my wife did not. My wife is not deaf, and she is very sensitive to emotional and spiritual currents. It’s possible that I was hearing a frequency from a subtle dimension that she could not hear, a frequency which to my consciousness was just as real as the sounds of bird songs or water. In other words, I was experiencing nonlocal consciousness.
My paranormal experiences over the past two decades suggest that we each have subtle senses that perceive what the physical senses do not or cannot process. We are capable of experiencing more than just the physical world, and some of us--perhaps all of us at one point or another--tune in to these subtle dimensions, sometimes without even being aware of it. Consciousness is not finite--even though many scientists and existentialists believe it is. When my wife was reading, I had no reason to question whether or not she heard the singer. I expressed my amazement, but she probably thought that I was referring to the passage she was reading.
I was not on drugs. Someone slipped me a hallucinogen once, many years ago, so I know what it’s like to hallucinate, and I was definitely not experiencing anything that appeared the least bit surreal or even out of the ordinary, except for those songs in the middle of the wilderness.
My wife still adamantly insists, whenever I mention it, that she has never heard anyone singing in the forest, anywhere.
I know how long it takes to compose a half-decent piece of music--days, weeks, even years. My brain could not have spontaneously composed and performed eight or nine masterpieces in a language that I did not know--even if I were hallucinating. How could I possibly have gotten all the notes and tempo and tone for each song just right? I cannot imagine how I could have hallucinated a singer who continued at the same pace and volume without making a single mistake for almost an hour. Such masterpieces would have taken me years to compose. I know because I have created a song cycle, which took me many years to complete. While writing music, I typically stop every few notes and check to see if I like what I’ve written. The singer was obviously a trained vocalist, which I am not. In fact, I have a very limited vocal range; I am lucky if I hit more than a few notes in a row. I have never even imagined myself singing so brilliantly up and down the scales.
And I could not have possibly hallucinated a brilliant singer performing an entire song cycle while at the same time I tried to listen carefully to my wife reading out loud. I am simply not that good at multi-tasking. I was in a relaxed state, concentrating on the writer’s ideas, occasionally annoyed that the singer was so loud and that my wife and I were not alone in the forest.
Another possibility is that I was hearing a performance from some other time, in what is known as retrocognition, or “timeslip.” In such cases sensitive people can view, hear, taste, touch, or smell aspects of events that have occurred in the past. In some cases, witnesses only hear the event, such as a battle many years after the actual event took place. In other cases, people have fully experienced the past, one of the most famous being the encounter in 1901 with Marie Antoinette by two scholars and early administrators of British university education for women, Annie Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, as they tried to find their way to Marie Antoinette's private château, the Petit Trianon. Believing that they had become lost, they encountered Marie Antoinette herself. They published an account of their experience in 1911 as An Adventure, describing how they had become convinced, over the following weeks, that persons they saw and even spoke to on that occasion, given certain details of dress, accent, topography and architecture, must have been in the last days of the Queen at Trianon in 1789. Of course, some have attempted to debunk the account of this paranormal event by these two professional women; some who are locked in local consciousness often mock and marginalize nonlocal consciousness.
Based on my experience, what exists outside the normal limits of our physical senses--and what we are capable of perceiving--is more than science can explain. Events from different times and different dimensions reverberate through consciousness as eternity unfolds, and the boundaries of consciousness continue to elude us.
I have heard the laughter of women near Native American pounding stones when no one else was in the vicinity. When no one else was around, I have heard voices correctly predicting what would happen many years later. I have heard someone make a rude noise right behind me when no one else was in the house. I have been shaken so hard that I thought my cells were going to fly apart and then nudged hard several times a little later--when no one else was in the room with me. Even though I was alone, I have been tapped hard on the shoulder and other times touched gently on my face. I have experienced visions of spiritual symbols without ever having seen them before, only to encounter them a short time later in the Tarot or in books or on the internet. I have experienced many intuitions that cannot be explained by science, a few of which might have saved my life.
Through it all I have relied on the banishing ritual to maintain balance and rid myself of negative energies that latch on to me. It is quite possible that I have had at least some of these paranormal experiences because I have gone through a process of self-purification and am therefore more open to subtle vibrations.
Until two decades ago, I was possibly even more skeptical than you, gentle reader. But an artist, at this stage of history when the fate of humanity is at stake, must speak his truth even if people consider him a lunatic. The artist has no choice, if he wishes to be relevant, but to sacrifice whatever is necessary to help maintain harmony and balance in the world. So for you I have placed my art, my life’s work, on the sacrificial altar.
True healing takes place on all levels of the psyche, and archetypes help in the cleansing process and in understanding spiritual principle. During meditation, which can occur as an integral part of ritual, I have discovered that if you are in the right state of mind the higher self presents spiritual principle through an association chain of archetypal symbols, much the same way that dreams often present a chain of psychologically meaningful symbols.
One of the blessings (or curses) of spiritual development is a hyper-sensitivity to the feelings of others. Once recently as I stood in line at a bookstore lightheartedly chatting with my wife, I suddenly felt the most hateful rage directed at me from a man standing nearby. I felt pierced by it and wondered for awhile afterwards why anyone would direct such hatred toward complete strangers who were simply having fun. At the time I was having difficulty letting go of anger and resentment myself--chronic illness over the years as I mentioned has led several times to a failure to realize my potential, and I was well aware that I have on occasion subconsciously projected anger outward at other people. After pondering for several hours, I eventually understood why in the bookstore the stranger’s projection of rage cut me so deeply. I was being reminded that thought forms charged with negative emotion can truly hurt others on a subconscious level. I have experienced similar psychic attacks before, and I redoubled my efforts to face my own demons.
For several days in ritual, during the Supreme Invoking Ritual, I focused on eliminating the feelings of anger and resentment. During the ritual, I moved from the station representing the element of Air--the conscious mind, what some might call the intellect--to the station representing spiritual Fire. In the ritual, you invoke the energy of each element, Air, Fire, Water, Earth respectively, as a way to cleanse and energize your aura. As a normal part of my ritual, I imagine the symbol associated with the element leaping into my psyche and then the energy of the ruling Archangel flowing toward me and swirling around me and into me.
In the first two quadrants of the elements (Air and Fire), I felt the energy of each element cleansing my aura. As energized as that made me feel, it wasn’t enough. I needed more than the purification of the active elements. When I moved to the station representing the Water Element, I felt a powerful wave of emotion, which started an association chain associated with the Tarot. I envisioned the card known as The Moon, associated with Pisces, a Water sign, and the Egyptian God Anubis. At that point, I experienced the sensation of going deep into my subconscious mind. Then I envisioned the card known as Death, associated with Scorpio, also a Water sign, a card which signifies dramatic transformation. I envisioned the child holding flowers up for the figure of Death and realized that I needed to become as a little child in the face of change. At that point, I imagined the Element of Water cleansing me deeply as black, negative energy drained out of me into the magma below the earth’s surface. Then in the ritual I moved to the station representing the Earth element, which started another association chain with the card known as The Devil, associated with Capricorn and with the Egyptian God Set.
The energies of the element of Earth are actually the spiritual background energies of the physical world, what some call “etheric" energy. The pure etheric energies of the element of Earth cleansed me and rejuvenated me until I felt whole, but only after I had consciously experienced a kind of rebirth after releasing the black, negative energies from deep in my subconscious mind and experiencing the cleansing energies of the Element of Water as well.
In the Major Arcana of the Tarot, twelve of the cards are associated with the zodiac, seven with the planets, and three with the elements (Water, Air, Fire). In order to facilitate the occurrence of association chains, I have laid out the twelve cards associated with the zodiac in the triplicities in their respective quadrants on my central altar, each Tarot card part of a symbolic progression.
The day after the deep cleansing, I experienced another association chain during ritual. When I invoked the Water element, I envisioned the symbol of Water, the blue head of an eagle, in my heart, and I suddenly felt on the verge of realizing a profound truth. Then I remembered the symbols associated with Scorpio: the scorpion, symbol of primal instincts deep in the subconscious; the snake, symbol of rebirth because it sheds its skin: and the eagle, symbol of the higher self (and nonlocal consciousness) because it flies high and experiences the perspective of eternity. I thought of those three symbols in terms of my progression of Tarot cards. The scorpion resembles the lobster climbing out of the water in the card known as The Moon. I thought of the snake in terms of the second card in my progression, Death. In the card, as I mentioned, a child presents flowers to the skeletal figure of death. The child in the card without fear accepts change and death as a natural process like a snake shedding its skin.
The association chains during these rituals add up to spiritual principle: The death of the lower personality and rebirth into the higher self opens up an awareness of divine energies within the physical world as well as powerful energies of other dimensions.
In a state of nonlocal consciousness, we can also contact and work with powerful spiritual beings. During my daily rituals I routinely ask God to send me an angel to provide guidance and keep me focused. It took me awhile to realize that the Archangel Raphael was sending me a powerful Angel from the order of the Melachim, which is associated with "Beauty" (Tiphareth in Hebrew), the Emanation known as the center of equilibrium, or the Christ center, on the Tree of Life. During each ritual, I feel this Angel's energy pressing into my forehead. Recently the angel has guided me to perform a powerful Christian ritual, based on the Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram (SIRP), that I probably would not have devised myself.
I had already focused on the purification of three of the main levels of negativity: personal negativity; the negativity of the soul-group, family and friends and ancestors; and the negativity of the culture and society in general. With the guidance of the Angel I am working with the Archangels to purify the collective consciousness of humanity. During the SIRP, with each of the four Archangels of the elements, Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, and Auriel, I am crucified. With each Archangel, at a crucial point in the ritual, I hold up my hands and imagine Almighty Ehyeh driving a large black nail into my palms. Then in each quadrant an aspect of God, Yud Heh, Vau, Heh in the first quadrant (associated with Raphael); Elohim in the second (associated with Michael); El in the third (associated with Gabriel); and Adonai in the fourth (associated with Raphael) in turn pound the nails deeper into my palms and into my feet. Then the Archangel associated with the quadrant finishes driving the nails all the way into my palms and feet. Then members from the order of Angels in each quadrant place a black crown of thorns on my head, and elementals associated with each Archangel collect in cups the blood that is streaming down from my head, hands, feet, and back. When that process is complete, the cross and I fall backward into the magma below the earth's surface and burn up completely, leaving only my soul. As black energy from the collective consciousness of humanity piles upon my soul, I ask the Archangel to work with our beloved Mother Earth to transform the negativity of the collective consciousness of humanity into harmony and light to create balance for the highest good of the planet and humanity as a whole. The black energy passes through me and burns up in the magma and transforms into light while the Archangel above also transforms the negativity into light. At first this process took a long time but generally now it takes less and less time each day. With Raphael, the dark energy feels associated within the negativity in the conscious mind of humanity; with Michael, the black energy feels like pure evil associated with the spiritual level; with Gabriel, the negativity feels like repressed emotions in the subconscious mind; with Auriel, it feels like negativity in the etheric body, where black energies sometimes get stuck before they turn into physical disease. This is risky, I admit, because the dark energies could linger in my aura, but eventually I am engulfed in brilliant light, and all the blood that had flowed down my body turns into gold or white light and a golden equal-armed cross appears, and I hold up my hands again. The black nails and crown of thorns and the blood have turned golden and my hands emanate light against the golden equal-armed cross. When this happens with each Archangel, I know that I have finished my work in that quadrant and move on. Eventually, when I complete the ritual, I am filled with light and bliss and feel compassion for all of humanity. I also often feel free of negativity in a way that I had never imagined possible. (Please do not try this on your own. You must purify and dedicate yourself and perform specific tasks within the ritual to avoid being overwhelmed and destroyed by the negative energies within the collective consciousness of humanity.)
There are as many paths to God as the breaths of men and women. The divine energies of the Earth can lead to an awareness of the higher self just as much as the spiritual energies of Heaven, and certainly the divine energies of Earth are the most accessible to us while the soul is tabernacled in the flesh. We experience these divine energies through our higher self as our personal consciousness links with Universal Consciousness--as local consciousness expands into nonlocal consciousness. In the process we know that consciousness is not finite, that essence precedes existence and that life is not meaningless and absurd. We know that there is unity underlying all consciousness and that all energy is holy and all life is divine.
1)https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7588183/#:~:text=The%20interconnected%20universal%20consciousness%20implied,conscious%20mind%20of%20each%20individual.
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